The Waiting Game
by The Feesh
Summary: Pre 2007 Movieverse The fine line between Autobot and Decepticon evil blurs for one unlikely prisoner of war. Rated T for psychological suffering and torture. Review if you read, please! Installment 3: posted! Fourth part coming soon.
1. Inauguration

The Waiting Game

By: Landray Depth Charge

"Sir, the prisoner in cell 24 is not doing well."

General Willbreaker shifted his horrid red gaze to the officer who had brought him such troubling news. The soldier shrunk back. "Well," the general started with a snooty, self-important air. "That's wondrous to hear, now isn't it? Perhaps he'll start talking."

The yellow and white Autobot shifted uncomfortably. "If…if I may speak freely, sir, a lot of us are uneasy about how the prisoners are treated here." He paused to gather his thoughts. "Especially the Decepticon in cell 24."

It was with a deft and blindingly fast movement that the general had the officer by the throat. "_No,_" he hissed dangerously. "You may _not_ speak freely within my presence, officer Harstice. The Decepticon will talk or he will die, it is that simple. I do not have time for Autobot sentimentality, and I will not show mercy towards _him_ of all Decepticons. He's intelligent and cunning, and I cannot afford him thinking that he will be rewarded for his silence." Willbreaker snarled and tossed the smaller officer into the wall behind him. "Go about your duty, Harstice, and do not bother me with such inferior issues again."

Of all the names a mechanoid could have taken, Willbreaker's suited his personality the best. He was known across the universe as a killer, a bounty hunter, but he worked for no particular side until recently; an Autobot commander below Optimus Prime had come to him with a request that he join them in the war. At first, the neutral had balked at the thought, but the reassurance that he would not be restrained in his tactics had perked his interest. A prisoner of war encampment, they called it. He was to be in charge of gaining information from Decepticon troopers…regardless of the method.

The alienoid jet stalked away from the command center and outside into the dusty blackness that was Paladyre-Fhi. The tiny planet was horrendous; very little gravity, no life, and covered in black dirt that billowed up into great clouds when the sometimes dire winds would kick up. Nobody lived there. Very few even knew it existed. It was the perfect place to set up a secretly scandalous Autobot camp.

General Willbreaker's feet sank into the deep ebony grains as he marched with finality and glee towards the cell building, where the prisoners were kept. Cell 24's occupant had proven to be especially resilient; despite numerous different torment tactics, he still refused to utter even a single word aside from his name and rank, information that Willbreaker and his team already knew. Their most recent approach, however, was taking a severe toll on the Decepticon in question.

The jet found relief from the dust once inside the stark, sparsely decorated metal structure. It was bland and simplistic, no more than one long hallway with cell doors on either side. But at the end of the box hallway itself was the fun area of the prison: the interrogation and solitary confinement rooms. The majority of the barred-in quarters were empty though, due to a large number of the Decepticon prisoners having died within a short span of time. There were still a few surviving, scattered here and there, one in cell 4, another in cell 15, and so on. The captive that General Willbreaker was most concerned about, though, was housed alone, away from anyone else.

Nobody spoke or made any noise as the Autobot commander walked down the hallway. It was silent and destitute, _the Decepticons have lost hope._ The jet stopped before the glowing energy bars and peered in at the form of the prisoner inside cell number 24. The Decepticon was sitting, leaning back against the corner, but as soon as Willbreaker came into view the prisoner stood. It provided the general with a sick satisfaction to watch as his captive paced frenetically along the rightmost wall, growling like the caged animal he was. It was irritated, nervous behavior; the Decepticon was slowly being reduced to his more primal thinking patterns, which was exactly what Willbreaker wanted; carnal processing stated one thing, and one thing alone: _survive._

Mindwarp, his trusted factionless friend, appeared at his right. "He is breaking," the psychologist hissed quietly.

Willbreaker grinned. "How much longer can you resist? Two weeks now without energon…that surely is painful."

"_Barricade_," the caged one barked impulsively as he paced. "Decepticon science officer and pilot. 473-D3122-0009851."

"And shock-trooper," Willbreaker added. "We know all that. I'm still more interested in what we don't know."

The black, blue, and silver offroader shook his head. "I am just as inclined to indulge my secrets to you now as I was yesterday."

The general tilted his head slightly, an amused look on his face. "That is the first original thing you have said in two weeks. Good. We're advancing."

Barricade ignored him wholly. Over the last few days, he'd been monitoring himself with an almost clinical detachment, noting each fluctuation in his vitals and the frequency in which they occurred. His systems were shutting down one by one, now, starting with the least needed for continued existence. Weapons were gone, radar had died, communications systems had powered down, along with every other systematic capability that Barricade did not need for direct survival. All he had running now was his fluid pumps, his cooling system, his processor, and nerve directories. The Decepticon was running on basics, more like an organic than a robot. And even with all of that power conserved, the last twelve hours had rendered another problem; at times, his fuel pump would skip pulses or stop altogether for several terrifying seconds, forcing him to the floor on more than one occasion.

And the _pain._

_It will end soon._

Death was staring Barricade in the face, and he was relying on it. He estimated another twelve to fourteen hours before his systems would begin fatal shutdown, and perhaps another two hours after that would render him offline for good. _Just sixteen more megacycles. Sixteen more. _He wanted it, he needed it, he yearned for his own demise like he'd never desired anything before; the Decepticon prisoner would have taken his own life a week ago had his weapon systems not been disabled by the Autobots after his initial capture.

They were still staring at him. Barricade snarled and only weaved back and forth along the wall with greater regularity, grumbling to himself, feeling trapped and cornered in this tiny cell that they kept him in. Mindwarp..he inwardly shuddered. Barricade hated that 'bot the most. The only reason the high-tech psychologist hadn't just downloaded the contents of his processor was because of the automatic defenses he had erected at the time. As soon as the forcefully excruciating connection had been made, Barricade had activated a protective virus created specifically for that occasion, and Mindwarp had immediately severed the link and backed off. The virus was potent and hard to kill, and the psychologist would not get near his download jacks after that.

Willbreaker had subsequently resorted to typical torture methods. Physical torment, Barricade could handle that with ease. It hurt, he screamed, but never once had he even been a tiny bit inclined to spill what he knew to make it stop. The good Autobot general had realized this shortly and had decided to take the next step: he threw Barricade back into his cage and starved him.

It was all incredibly annoying. Willbreaker wanted what Barricade knew, and he wanted it something fierce given that the usual prisoners who came his way were uninformed soldiers. Not this one. Not the darkly colored offroader. Barricade was one of Megatron's higher officers, and if he managed to wrangle what information the Decepticon had, Willbreaker would be rolling in the dough. There was merely the unfortunate matter he was facing now; Barricade was still not talking, and who knew how much longer he'd last before succumbing either to utter insanity or death. Watching as the aggravated mech continued his obsessive weaving, Willbreaker knew that one or the other was not far off. Time for the starvation tactic to reach the next level.

"I'll tell you what, Barricade," the general cooed almost sweetly. Soothingly. "Let's trade. I'll give you something you want in return for you giving me something I want."

"_Smelt you!_" he cried in impetuous response, lifting both hands and clawing at the metal wall in frustration and pain. "It's a waiting game now."

_Insanity first, then._ "Allow me then to tempt you."

It was curiosity alone that compelled the black and cobalt mechanoid to momentarily stop to look at his tormentor. Just a few inches shy of the energy bars, clutched within Willbreaker's hands, was a cube. Energon. _Life._ Conflicting directives arose and Barricade growled but held steady, staring with wanton malevolence at the slightly glowing pinkish liquid inside the tempered glass container. Every system screamed _survival_ but he deliberated, arching his head back. That cube would be the end of the pain, the beginning of relief from the physical anguish, a cessation in the mind numbing desperation for sustenance that at times had Barricade ripping at the walls in terror. The torture would _end_ and all for the sake of a few words. Information.

Willbreaker was a patient mech; he held the cube up in plain sight, waiting with fortitude for a reaction of any kind. Barricade was also very stubborn, and while he considered the general's offer, he stepped back as though intent on denying him yet again. "Use your reason, Barricade," the faux Autobot crooned. "Agree to it and you can have this. Only agree to it, you don't even have to tell me anything right now."

So simple, so simple, it would be so simple. It registered with vehemence and anger that Willbreaker was dangling the cube in front of his nose as a keeper might wriggle a piece of meat to a predator who couldn't get to it. With a mechanical screech of rage the Decepticon went back to pacing wildly. He wanted it. _Agree to it._ He could have it if he said – _No. Nononono. LIARS. They lie, they cheat, they will not hold true to their part in the bargain if I give them what they want. No. No. No._ Frantic thought patterns that consisted of survival directive and Decepticon directive fought with one another. Cessation of pain versus betrayal of his kind. _They will starve me regardless. No._

_Sixteen megacycles._

The wicked red stare finally focused again on Willbreaker, and with a spine-chilling laugh, he shrugged. "It's a waiting game, now, Willbreaker. A game you will lose."


	2. Starvation

The fact of the matter was this: Barricade was not built to ingest solids.

_Nearly there._ The blue and black mechanoid made a horrific sound and heaved again, doubling over with his shoulder pressed against the wall for support. _Six megacycles to go._

Two hours ago he'd gone insane. The agony had reached the point where he needed to put something in his body, and so, with very little cognitive decision involved, Barricade had begun consuming the only thing available:

_Himself._

Cybertronian construction and design did little when it came to devouring solids. Their matter-to-energy conversion capabilities were for the most part limited to liquids and demi-solids – gels and the like. So when he began to rip off and swallow bits of his armor in his wild attempts at ending the burning misery, it should have come as no surprise that it began to come back up almost immediately. Barricade wasn't sure which was worse; the pain of starving, the sharp ache of tearing himself apart, or the sensation of his body violently rejecting the bits after he'd gotten them down.

_Won't be trying that again._

Brutal retching did nothing to help or relieve his current situation. Barricade slid down the length of the wall, shaking, his legs folding up beneath him as he sat. Death could not grace him with its presence any sooner, could it? Detached, the Decepticon tuned inwards as he looked over the chewed up and destroyed armor plating covering his arms. His cooling system was gone. Soon, the fluid pump and nerve distribution arrangement would begin to wane and Barricade would be left with but a brain. He'd have just enough nerve activity to feel the suffocating, spiking throb of being housed inside a body without a beating heart. That thought scared him infinitesimally; the Decepticon would be aware of every second that passed as his spark wailed and thrashed in its death throes before finally collapsing on itself and ceasing to utterly exist.

All for the sake of his people, his race, his leader, and his cause.

Such pain. Barricade had not fallen into recharge for the better part of five solar rotations and the lack of suitable rest was wreaking as much havoc on his psyche as the lack of energon was to his body. _Six more megacycles._

In an isolated fashion, the captive found it horrifying that he was the living countdown clock to his own death. Barricade knew enough about starvation to understand how it was going to go and usually in what order. He possessed a basic idea of what it would feel like, though personal accounts on the experience were hard to come by and everything else was mere speculation. Oh, but the articles he had read on the subject just didn't word it right! They stated that the incident of starvation was uniquely painful; Barricade felt an undeniable urge to hunt down whoever it was that was responsible for that article and beat them over the head with something heavy. "Uniquely painful" was a terribly dulled down way of stating what he felt like. It was more like…rip-your-own-spark-out-and-eat-it. It was like screaming until your vocal processes shorted out and your voicebox exploded. It was like _white-hot smoldering stabbing bits of metal rendering torment and crying and the psychological wretchedness of knowing when and how __**I AM GOING TO DIE!**_

Panic grappled his mind and refused to let go; the comparatively small Decepticon launched to his feet and gripped the sides of his helm, howling in absolute despair. The sound itself was not a scream, it was not a yell, but instead a shriek of pain and destitution, a high-pitched mechanical wail that made the surviving cellmates wince and shrink away.

Willbreaker just laughed.

Barricade jerked backwards and felt his back connect violently with the cold unforgiving wall behind him. That _sound_. Such a jovial and triumphant sound! It was forever imprinted on the carnal, bestial side of the offroaders processor, never to be forgotten. Four optics gleamed and glowed with unbridled and unadulterated revulsion as he let off a whistling squeal at the indignation. Barricade was suffering one of the worst deaths imaginable, and this mech was standing there watching with sadistic glee and laughing about it!

"Still alive, I see," the Autobot general drawled. "Barely. Have you considered my offer? It still stands."

Barricade snarled and withered back against the wall. "_Smite_ you and all who you may love!"

Willbreaker shook his helm slowly, clucking his voicebox. "Tsk-tsk, such animosity. I am being very generous, here, Barricade. Talk for me, and you'll get everything you need."

_Six more megacycles. _"To the smelter with the lot of…with the lot of..."

A shiver of cruel pleasure ran up the length of Willbreaker's main neuro-network cable as Barricade found himself suddenly weakened. The prisoner's defensive posture sank in exhaustion, and little more than a plaintive whine escaped from his vocal processes to finish the sentence. His Decepticon prisoner was at the breaking point, so many others would have given up by now, but not him. Barricade's training was extensive, or perhaps his will was that resilient.

That thought had never occurred to Willbreaker; what if Barricade's spirit could not be destroyed? Even now so very close to death the captive remained portentously defiant. Every other Decepticon who stepped through the facility door had given up something. Barricade had only vomited up his name, rank, and identification numbers, all three of which were trivial and otherwise fairly simple to find out once a name was acquired. Failure was not an option in the Autobot commander's case, but it seemed that perhaps he had finally found someone worthwhile.

The hiss that escaped his metal lip-plating was soft. "You have proven resilient and defiant, loyal to your leader and cause," murmured Willbreaker, just softly. "Everyone else whom I have dealt with here had broken long before now; impressive, Barricade. Very impressive." Barricade only glared at him from his slumped position against the wall as the psuedo-Autobot continued: "A regrettable waste for you to die here, it would be. What if I gave to you my word that if you tell me everything you know, not only will you get the energon you so desperately need, but on my word of honor I will let you go."

Barricade slid down into a sitting position, letting his helm roll around his shoulders. "Willbreaker, still you try," he managed weakly. "Six megacycles left in his game. Maybe a little less, if I'm lucky."

"You will choose death over life, and for what?" The Autobot commander stepped closer to the bars. "For honor? For your race? For your leader? Why?"

"For loyalty. Something you know nothing about."

_Satisfaction._ And this time it wasn't Willbreaker who was feeling it, but Barricade. The faux Autobot snorted and stormed off down the hall, leaving him to his pains and fears and impending doom. Just seeing the snide and snobby brat get all in stitches over it was enough to make some grotesque version of a smile grace the Decepticon prisoners face. _I'm going to win this fight. Not him. He knows it._

But yet again the offroader had been left alone to contemplate his misery. Barricade wasn't sure if it was good thing or not that he was getting used to the maddening agony that tore across his sensory grids with efficient ferocity. _Maybe a bit less than six after all. That would be nice._

Thirty minutes clicked by, finding the captive staring off into space. He found the ceiling increasingly interesting, what with the constant bloom of color that spread like a kaleidoscope across the otherwise drab gray ceiling. In clinical detachment Barricade knew that he was hallucinating, but he didn't care; it was a small distraction from the misery his life had become. A bit of…_color_ in his now dull and pointless existence. So the blue, black, and silver alien vehicle sat with his helm reclined to gape upwards, at the ceiling, and past it. The stars were just beyond that, weren't they? Millions of them. Some of which he'd even visited before or flown past among his numerous voyages amidst the dark and silent depths of space. The prisoner remembered, and remembered well the majority of his experiences, and as a final self-mercy, Barricade shuttered his optics and forced everything current from his mind, focusing on things past.

He thought of home. He mused on the politics he'd once been involved in. On things that had once interested him and still did. Barricade remembered things he'd never get to see again, simple things, most, such as watching a stars end in a violent cacophony of matter, energy, and light. Even things so simple as mathematical equations. To distract himself from the countdown, he brought up numbers and signs and symbols and went over them in his head, examining things he'd memorized; theorems and physics, ranging from simple math to highly advanced. He'd always enjoyed physics and mathematical science…

"Why, hello there!"

Barricade felt his fuelpump stop yet again, only to jump-start and begin to hammer inside his chest. The voice, it was oddly familiar. Blearily, the prisoner rested his hands on the floor and peered at the bars that held him in. Nobody was there. _Odd. Hearing things now, Barricade?_ Well, that was slagging rude of his mind to trick him out of such nicely distracting things like –

Barricade blinked and looked to his left. A ragged, torn-up face greeting his own ugly mug with a smile. "Deadbolt?"

The mech in question nodded and shifted, crossing one battered leg over the other. He was sitting on the prison berth that Barricade never used. "Well, yeah. You know anyone else who looks like me?"

"Primus alive," Barricade marveled, shaking his head. "I haven't seen you in centuries!"

The jeep-like mech laughed. "Well, slag. Being dead kind of makes communing with the living a bit hard." The jovial grin disappeared from Deadbolt's broken face. "You look like the smelter, boyo."

"Can't really be helped," Barricade replied with a slow bob of his head. "I look like you."

"Yeah, and I look like a dead guy. Says a lot for you, 'Cade."

The captive nodded and bowed his head then in contemplation. "What..what is it like?"

Deadbolt tilted his head, focusing black and shattered optics on his long time friend. "What, being dead? Eh…it ain't so bad. Not really. Gets boring sometimes." The destroyed shell made a flippant gesture with his hand, ignoring the fact that he was missing fingers. "It ain't the horrid pits of molten rock and acid that the Autobots try to scare us with."

"So it isn't that bad?" Relief. Now all Barricade had to do was get through the actual dying part. That was going to be the tough element.

"Yeah. Ain't nothing to be afraid of, my friend."

A long silence set about the pair, the dead and the soon-to-be-such, as they both contemplated various subjects of diverse interests.

"Hey..'Cade?"

Barricade lifted his helm and focused on the dead Decepticon keeping him company. "Yeah?"

Deadbolt looked at him with a sorrowful stare, black optics weeping bereavement for his friend's predicament. "I want…I want you to have something of mine that I never shoulda taken with me."

Concerned, the blue and black offroader tilted his head. "What's that?" asked Barricade.

The robot corpse dug around in subspace for a second before taking Barricade's hand in his, dropping a small object into the dying Decepticon's palm. The captive opened his hand palm-up and studied the small black crystal that Deadbolt had given him. It was something that the former shock trooper had carried around with him everywhere…for luck. "My fortune ran out on it," Deadbolt lamented softly. "But you still got a chance."

Barricade shook his head, but closed his hand around the stone. "Not really. I'll be seeing you soon, Deadbolt."

The deceased one smiled again, though his grin was cheerless. "Yeah. Look me up, 'Cade."

Right before of his optics, Deadbolt vanished into thin air, no more than a memory.


	3. Regurgitation

He sang to himself.

Barricade stared silently up at the stained, rusted ceiling of his cell, quietly humming and grating out a few words to a tune he knew. In a detached manner, he realized he was a sorry excuse for a singer and spared the other incarcerated Decepticons the agony of hearing him. _No point in putting them through more torture than they've already been through_.

The screams had lessened over the last few hours. Sometimes the only auditory input he could detect was the keening and pained groans of his fellow soldiers as they died so horribly within the confines of the prison. When Barricade had been delivered, bound and gagged, to Paladyre-Fhi, he wondered why he had never heard of such an apparently frightful operation. Now he knew. _Those who come in here do not come out._

_I am no exception._

_Two megacycles to go._

The pain had not reduced even though his systems had begun critical failure some three hours ago. Barricade was running on literal fumes, feeling it every time his fuel pump skipped a pulse, watching as his internal core temperature slowly but steadily rose towards unhealthy levels. Had there been a decent level of oxygen on the dingy, dusty planet, he would have utilized backup air-intakes to cool his systems, but breathing was sort of taboo to Cybertronians anyway. Not that it truly mattered. Death was knocking at his door.

Some organics described the time leading up to death as a flash of light; others saw their lives over the course of a few seconds directly before they passed away. Barricade experienced neither. He had never read anything specific about fatality regarding his species; near-death experiences were rare for an entirely mechanical race given that if a machine died, it was difficult to bring it back. Sometimes a Transformer would get lucky and a medic would reach him or her before the spark disintegrated and they would be able to ward away permanent offlining, but not often. Without a working body, the spark simply couldn't live for long. Barricade only found himself thinking about his life. He regretted none of it – quite the opposite, as it were. He was intensely proud of the time he had spent serving beneath Megatron, the years and centuries and entire millennia dedicated to bettering his cause.

What did he have to regret? What could he possibly be ashamed about? The Autobots, Barricade was sure, would have a few suggestions for him but they didn't matter.

…Come to think of it, there were a _lot_ of things that had very little standing in the scheme of things.

Turbo-foxes.

Paint thinner.

The Granthis Algorythm.

And by Primus, how Barricade _hated_ nebulas.

The irritating, thick clouds of gas and plasma – the precursor to stars. They were hot, they scrambled radar feeds, and if the ship's outer armor were thin or had even a single chink in it, it could spell disaster for a vessel of any size. As the pilot and chief science officer of the _Nemesis_, Barricade had navigated through his fair share of nebulae without a hitch, but it was the one time in which he nearly _hadn't _gotten through one that had soured him entirely. Nebulae could be truly beautiful to witness, what with their colors and lights and shapes. Barricade thought they were one of the universe's greatest evils.

The ship he'd been piloting was small, a tiny interstellar star-jumper that seated ten comfortably, eleven if one didn't mind riding in the storage room. The four guests had been requested by Megatron himself to visit the great flagship _Nemesis_, and he'd decided on Barricade, a capable pilot, to get them. The first leg of the trip went without trouble, but one radar failure later and the Decepticon officer and his passengers found themselves barging headfirst into a highly volatile mass of roiling nebula. The craft's armor began to melt immediately, sending warnings and sirens along the inside of the cab. Naturally, the passengers had panicked. Barricade had never found the thought of mind numbing fright attractive, so he'd kept his cool and guided the small ship to the best of his knowledge, finding the edge of the gas cloud and exiting it before the four commuters aboard had a complete mental meltdown. After an emergency landing and a quick patch job on the outer hull, Barricade was on his way once again.

_Stupid nebulae. Stop being so disorganized and become stars already! Nobody likes a cloud of dust and gas. Nebula into star into nebula into star again? Pre-stars, but post-stars, too. Nebula into star. Supernova. Nebula again. Reform into another star and repeat?_

He'd never researched that. The offroader was an intelligent mech when it came to science, physics, mathematics, and fighting, and yet he wasn't sure if a nebula would reform into a star over and over again. It would have been a long but relatively interesting study. Not that his career would have allowed him the luxury of staring at a burning ball of gas for millions of years – hardly, Barricade had been far too busy for that. When he wasn't active in navigating or piloting, he was down on the front lines tearing his enemies apart with his bare hands. When he wasn't fighting, he was usually off-duty, holed up in his quarters to…do whatever it was that he did that nobody else on the Nemesis was sure about. Barricade was not the most revealing of mechs, and everyone else just stayed out of his private business.

Except, of course, Frenzy.

The Decepticon prisoner wasn't sure whether he liked Frenzy or hated him. The chaotic little wild thing had been assigned as his official mission partner given that during deep infiltration simulations, they worked together the best. Their personalities were nothing short of hot and cold, though, but when it came down to getting the business of warfare done swiftly and efficiently, few could top Barricade and Frenzy. The unfortunate part of it was that Barricade was built with the rare capability to entirely support another life via special systems, chambers, and data uplinks, and Frenzy was made to be either symbiotic or independent. He could support himself or accept a coefficient relationship with a partner, which was advantageous if a team was required to get close and stay close. Thus far, such a situation had not arisen between the hyperactive mech and Barricade, but still Frenzy insisted on hanging around.

The pilot wasn't entirely sure why, but he had a feeling that his partner was sizing him up, feeling him out, looking for weaknesses, and that only made Barricade's natural sense of paranoia perk its ears.

Then again, it was hard for a habitual liar like Barricade to trust anyone.

The captive smirked to himself, shutting off his quadoptics. Oh, how he adored gaining the trust of someone else, only to break it and then dangle it in front of their face. He was a mechanoid of many talents, and acting, it seemed was one of them. Nobody on the Nemesis would ever believe it due to his spitfire, violent nature, but Barricade could be extremely personable when confronted correctly. Or rather, he could act perfectly pleasant. Whether it was real or not was often the main question when dealing with the Decepticon officer, and more often than not, if Barricade was kind to anyone, it was usually only in order to stab them in the back later.

He was treacherous; he was infuriating; he was instigating. The offroader took personal pleasure in turning his fellow Decepticons against each other in clever and roundabout ways to watch as they bickered and spat at one another. For some time Barricade managed to create explosive events of bedlam aboard the warship Nemesis and never got fingered for it – until the day Starscream figured him out. That had been a definitively bad day. One full of hollering and screaming and beatings and pain and Barricade had never once lost his victorious smirk throughout the entire ordeal.

It didn't stop him, either. Devastator was an idiot, quick to anger, easy to trick; the now-prisoner had taken great delight in whispering false accusations in his audial to watch him go on a destructive rampage. Such manipulation was useful, especially regarding the subject of revenge on Starscream for beating him within an inch of his life the day he'd been had. The pilot and science officer had watched from the darkness as Devastator had gone positively apeshit on the interstellar jet for something he thought Starscream had said. After which, he'd made a quiet and swift retreat and wasn't seen for two days, laying low, wisely allowing the Decepticon second-in-command the time to cool off before returning to his typical duties.

Barricade generally wasn't one for such treachery, but a mind like his needed at least one source of amusement that didn't involve reading and words. As much as he loved science, the officer equally appreciated physical work and watching such. At around sixteen feet tall, he was considered small, but when it came to hauling his weight around the Nemesis Barricade oftentimes did more than his fair share out of sheer boredom. On the rare days in which he was off-duty, he characteristically did one of four things: holed up in his room, created havoc around the massive cruiser, used the mission simulation rooms, or helped out in other ways. The lattermost was rarest of all. Now that the dying officer thought about it, he'd miss going through battle and stealth simulations with Frenzy, even if they knew it all and only did it for practice. Despite being machines and calculated in every aspect of their existence, they still screwed up and needed to apply their knowledge to keep their minds sharp in the off times.

He wondered idly what Frenzy thought of his disappearance. They'd only been partners for a few months before his capture, and in Cybertronian terms, that was a short span of time. Just long enough for them to learn to begrudgingly tolerate each other when not on missions. In all likelihood, the spastic little Decepticon had chipped Barricade's name into the loss bucket and moved on. He probably had already found a new partner.

Better for it, the prisoner thought. Frenzy was far too single minded and zealous to be held back by such a menial obstacle as a partner disappearing. That, and he'd never been the personal type; Barricade had noted early on that the twitchy little freak, while being nosy on the subject of his partner's personal affairs, was loathe to speak about himself or his life. Unless Frenzy was with him, Barricade had no idea what the infiltration specialist was doing.

He hadn't realized anyone had stepped in front of the cell until the door had creaked unlocked, and by then, they were on him.

The Decepticon snarled and struggled, snapping at the hands that were suddenly pinning down his limbs and bearing his body to the ground. Muddied, blurry vision couldn't track the swift movements; another taloned hand jammed his head down, pressing his cheek to the floor and restricting his movement. Willbreaker grinned as the group of grunts effectively took advantage of Barricade's evident nap and trapped him before the mech could even gain his feet. Too sluggish to even wake up. Delightful.

"Barricade, I want to ensure I have your attention." The faux-Autobot knelt near the fallen's helm, depositing the items he carried onto the floor. "I want you to be awake for every second of this. Do you understand me?"

He could not have waited another two megacycles...

"Barricade!"

The strike to his cranium was sharp, and drove a rattled growl from the prisoner's vocal unit.

The smile gracing Willbreaker's handsome features could only be described as terrifying, even to Barricade. "Good. Open his mouth."

One of them grabbed his headcrests and pulled, forcing his head back, and worryingly, baring his throat. The Decepticon officer was more concerned over that fact, as bundles of wiring and fluid lines could so neatly be sliced when one's throat was exposed. Writhing wildly, Barricade tried to jerk his head back down and felt searing pain flare up, seemingly from nowhere. It felt as though his body was on fire, burning and cracking, breaking like dry cement to a hammer as he bucked against his handlers and attempted to sink his teeth into one of them. Metal dentals slammed down with a jarring clang on what he perceived, at first, to be a finger, but proved otherwise.

They craned his head back, and one of the brutes pulled the metal control bit down. The prisoner's powerful jaws groaned open.

The feeling of construction grade tubing against sensitive body tubing was never pleasant, and Willbreaker was certainly none too gentle with it as he forced the thick hose down Barricade's craw. "As I see it, you seem to think you have some manner of control," the Seeker said methodically as he jammed the tube down past the prisoner's vox, grinning in satisfaction at the pained retching noise that caused. "By thinking you have control of your own life. This is not the case." The cube of energon, rich with energy, was tilted and poured into the tube. "You have no control, Barricade. I will keep you here alive for as long as I wish – or until I get what I want." The cube was empty, so another was delivered, and then a third. Barricade wasn't sure if the sustenance filling his gut felt good or hurt.

It was a relief when the hose was yanked out of his mouth, but they still had his jaws. The Decepticon's limbs felt like they were made of lead. He tried to struggle, tried to move but the Autobot guards held him fast in their grip. One squeezed, hammer like fingers digging into Barricade's wrists; he yelped when one cracked, sending knife like stabs of pain up his arm.

Willbreaker only watched and smirked a Barricade lay, dazed and restrained, on the floor. "This is what you have become, and this is what you will always be. Tell me what I want to know, and I will kill you gently. I will release you from all of this."

"_All right_!" he gasped, voicebox rasping. "All right..."

The Autobot commander shuddered, armor rippling in anticipation.

"I…"

"Say it."

"But…"

"You will be free. The pain will end."

The silence was deafening to the psuedo-Autobot. His prisoner whispered something, a wheeze, a breath so soft not even his advanced hearing had understood it. Willbreaker leaned down to hear him.

"…Go… get…_smelted_!"

Willbreaker's roar echoed through the prison, silencing the whimpers of the few surviving mechs there.

"You will regret ever saying that!"

And Barricade did.

For once in his life, he wished he had given up. The desire to turn back time and do it over again, to give Willbreaker what he wanted, only grew worse as invading hands and taloned fingers forced him to vomit the energon back into the cubes, only to have the hose re-introduced, and the regurgitated liquid poured back in. Again and again, over and over until Barricade's esophageal tubing bled and he retched so hard that he nearly shut down from the strain.

Willbreaker left him on the floor of the cell in the puddle of energon he'd thrown up seven times over.

________________________________________________________________________

_Authors note: Special thanks to Liona Skycat for her information and amusing drabble on nebulae!_


End file.
